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I think I’ve said before how I love living in the South. I’m not, however, uncritical of my home state, as I believe holding Mississippi to a higher standard than it is accustomed to meeting is an essential step toward bringing her into the 21st century.

I don’t mind holding someone’s hand and gently walking the road of progress with them, but uuuugh, how I loathe having to drag someone out of the ’50s kicking and screaming. The 1950’s, y’all. Seriously.

When Bill Maher aired a little episode of his show last season in which a Real Time correspondent visited this state, I was so disgusted by their coverage that I promptly canceled my subscription to HBO. (Subsequently I have hooked up my computer to the tv and obtained permission to use a friend’s Dish username and password to access HBO Go, because come on, I’m not gonna miss The Newsroom.) It’s not that I am angry at Maher for exposing the poverty, ignorance, and racism that is so prevalent in this state (as it is in many others as well). What I mind is his bone-headed assertion that those were the people his correspondent met the moment she stepped off the plane. Reeeaaaallly…. because I have lived here my entire life, and I have never once ran into someone with “white power” patches sewn into their shirt. That’s the kind of thing you have to go looking for, even in Mississippi.

But you don’t have to poke around much before you run into something or someone who is just mind-numbingly, astoundingly, brazenly racist. I know there are people and ideas like that in every single state in this nation, and in every country on the planet. Does Mississippi have more than its fair share? I don’t know. This is the only place I’ve ever lived for this long. I am not comparing it to any other place, because I don’t care how hateful people here are in comparison to somewhere else – I care that there is hatred here at all. I do believe in the power of love to conquer hate, just as lightness can drive out the dark … but you have to shine the light first. If people are not ashamed to say things in public, should we be hesitant to repeat them? Is that not being an enabler to a hate-monger?

I want to be clear that I’m not trying to expose this young man simply for others to enjoy an opportunity to belittle or ridicule him and his friends. I just want to have a conversation. I was floored to find this on Facebook. I was floored that people will teach their kids to hate! These are younger people. High school, maybe college. They weren’t born racist. They were taught this. It just blows my mind.

I’m not a fan of Barack Obama. I did not vote for him. (I also did not vote for Mitt Romney.) There are legitimate reasons to withhold one’s support from President Obama. However, to deny that race plays a significant role in the Southern animosity toward our President is willfully ignorant.

How can a person get away with saying something like this and no one even blinks an eye? This has been on this guy’s Facebook page ever since November 7th. I’m not friends with this person. I stumbled onto his profile after he popped up in my “people you may know” section due to our mutual friends. The comments on his status were numerous, but I just wanted to provide a quick synopsis of the conversation:

So why do some people sit at the same exact place and talk on each other’s facebook walls/statuses? I mean, not just a comment or two but like ALL-NIGHT-LONG CONVERSATIONS with each other.

Well, it’s obvious why they do it. They’re doing it to show you what an awesome time they’re having. “Isn’t this fun?” “Oh yeah it’s fun it’s like the most fun evar omg!” “I know right I’m so drunk!” “I know I’m drunk too, these drinks are the best!” “No you’re the best, [insert inside joke]” and on and on it goes.

Here’s a message to the ones of you who do this:

IF YOU WERE HAVING ANY FUN AT ALL, YOU WOULDN’T BE ON FACEBOOK CONSTANTLY TALKING ABOUT IT!

Like this:

I’ve never been a fan of the comma. I’m not a stupid person. I took an IQ test when I was 8 and it said I was over two standard deviations above the norm (though not by too much). I graduated college cum laude, and had a 3.88 GPA when I received my Master of Science degree. I watch the news. I read, daily, and not just magazines. I put together puzzles with my kids, can answer 99% of all my parents’ computer questions, and taught myself how to cross-stitch. I can spell, and if there’s any question about a word then I have enough sense to use spell check. I can communicate a little in both Spanish and Arabic.

But the comma. I just have never mastered the use of the thing. Sometimes I’ll grossly over-use it, inserting one every time I feel myself wanting to pause, whether it is grammatically necessary or not. Even more often I’ll just leave the damn thing out because I know I don’t know where it belongs or how many times I should insert it. I just loathe the comma. A very long time ago – I was probably ten years old – I sat in class and thought, “You know what? Fuck it. I can read, I can write, and by the way these teachers act, either I’m pretty damn smart or I’m in class with a shit ton of retards [maybe both?], so you know what? Screw you, comma. I’ll misuse and abuse you, neglect you and not even care. Because some things I will be great at, but I think I can live if comma use is not one of them.” And from then on, I just didn’t care.

Recently I said to a friend, “I’m craving some Creole baby,” and she poked fun at me as if I wanted her to cook me a Cajun infant. So when I saw this, I laughed a lot:

Hahaha. I honestly lol’d at this, as I did when Kibbies pointed out my mistake on fb.

You can make fun because it is funny, but I will not apologize for my use of commas or lack thereof. Maybe I can help it, but I don’t care enough to try. And as long as we’re on the subject of grammar, let me make a few more points:

On chats and texts I do not give a shit. On twitter sometimes it is necessary to shorten things by inserting numbers or leaving out vowels. If you do not understand this because you are that big of a grammar Nazi, you should really seek professional help. Valium might do the trick.

There is a difference between typos and being stupid. If I say that I want to do somwthing, well that is obviously a typo. If I said I want to do alot of things, that’s me being too stupid to know how to spell “a lot”, and too lazy to utilize spell check. Careless I can handle, dumb and lazy deserve a good ribbing.

I leave off the ends of some words because that is how I speak. So yes, I may say I’m jus shoppin around for some new shoes. Because if I was speaking to you, that’s how it would sound. I do it because it sounds like me, not because I’m trying to shorten a word. Would I write that in an essay? No. Do I think it is too grammatically incorrect for facebook? Uh, no. It’s facebook, get a life. That being said, there are people on there who clearly need to either get laid or start retaking English classes from like third grade on. I’m n0t sur3 wh1ch, but wr1t1ng l1k3 th15 1s un@cc3pt@bl3!

And if you wanna call me stupid or lazy for my comma use, that’s okay too. I prefer the good-natured joking, but I can handle the criticism as well. This is just me saying that, barring some insanely grammatically incorrect statuses, I just can’t waste my energy on the nit-picking anymore. It’s not fun. I’m jus sayin.

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Inspiration

But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859